March is here and we have been on a winning streak so we have no rationed events going into this game. We do, however, have 2 unrationed events we haven’t used yet. We have the Decontamination Kit which allows us to remove all plague cubes from 1 location and the Relocation event that destroys up to 3 cities in the infection discard pile.
During the set up of our first game in March we were told it was critical to recon South America before the Hollow Men sabotage anything important. We also learned there are 4 main labs but they were not designed to last beyond 50 years. There was also a hint that we need to find havens outside the Atlantic because they could have supplies or equipment we could use. We got information from the archives about finding a cure. There was something called PEARL that was on the verge of finding a cure but it went silent. We learned that OPAL, JADE, AND TOPAZ are in place to support PEARL but they cannot find a cure on their own so we need to keep routes between viable. This was from Year 57.
We now have 3 objectives to complete in March. We still have to build 3 new supply centers, but now we have to do an additional 2 more objectives. These other objectives are Recon 1 unknown region, connect 2 new cities to the grid, complete 2 searches, or access a lost haven. The same characters were used as in the February game.
Everything about this game in March was difficult. We were not getting a good combination of cards and cities kept being infected. We considered using the Relocation card a couple of times to take out cities out of the infection discard pile, but we ultimately decided to try to handle it on our own. Even if we did this I think it would have been nearly impossible for us to win. Newt ended up having to use the Decontamination Kit card to save himself from being exposed. So now this card is out of the game forever, but fortunately no one was exposed during this game. We were able to build a supply center in Paris and search it as well. Paris gave us a Companion Engineer, which allowed us to build a supply center with 1 fewer card if you had this card in your hand. This is an ongoing effect that can be used in future games. Our other search occurred in Chicago. This search allowed us to put 2 supply cubes from the stockpile on Chicago, which at that point helped out a lot. We were not able to build any more supply centers or recon South America before we had too many incidents from the plague cubes and the game was lost. Our first loss.
When we finished our game in March we still had things to open. One of these things included more epidemic cards because now that we are adding more cards to the player deck the game thinks we should make it harder. So depending on how many cards are in the player deck determines how many epidemic cards you should put in the deck. We also got some more character upgrades and the ability to spend 2 supply cubes to make a sea lane from one port city to another.
As our game end upgrades we added the Architect ability to the Laborer so now she needed one less card to build a supply center. This would mean she would only need 3! We also upped the population in one city which is escaping me right now.
It was getting late but we didn’t want to end on a loss, so we decided to play again. We got 2 rationed events because of our loss and we chose one quiet night and drastic measures. We still had our unrationed event of Relocation.
Our second game in March was also crazy. From the beginning things were out of control. Washington, Lagos, and Sao Paulo were huge problems from the beginning so we decided to use Relocation on Sao Paulo since we needed the ability to be in that city to recon South America. We permanently removed 3 Sao Paulo cards from the game. I believe these are all of the Sao Paulo cards. One of our produce supplies card was also destroyed because we used the system-wide production ability on it.
Even with all of the craziness we were able to win March by re-conning South America, connecting 2 new cities to the grid, and building 3 supply centers. We had a supply center in New York, Washington, and Jacksonville. We connected Santiago and St. Petersburg to the grid. This game was near the brink of losing. We had 4 cards left in the player deck and London was blowing up. Luckily Aofie was able to help London and help give Claire her last yellow card to make the supply center in Jacksonville. I’m pretty sure 2 of us were in cities with plague cubes but since the game ended and we didn’t have to start in those cities and we escaped without any exposures. THIS GAME IS STRESSFUL!
Now we finished March. We have 14 cities on the grid and we got a new unrationed event called Strategic Reserves. This allows us to move up to 8 supply cubes from the reserve to the stockpile for use in the game. This could be good for starting a game without many supplies. We upgraded by giving the Administrator the Runner ability. The Runner can discard a city card while in a haven or supply center to move to any location on the grid. We also made a permanent supply center in Washington. I forgot to take a picture of the board because it was so late.